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Wednesday, December 15, 2010

I had a feeling it was going to play out like this.

The first time I saw one of the little Diamondback .380-cal pocket pistols in a dealer's showcase, I let out an involuntary squee. The thing looked like a prop gun from that Disney classic, Honey! I Shrunk The Glock! Unlike the plethora of Kel-Tec-alikes out there, it looked like a tiny copy of a service pistol and not some gun-shaped key fob you get out of a gumball machine.

I wanted to like it. I wanted it to work, but I wasn't holding my breath. I've learned to be very wary of completely new pistol designs; for every success story, it seems like there are a half-dozen that aren't ready for prime time yet. I'm just not the early adopter type.

Does anybody have some personal experience with the Sig P238? I was looking at a few of those, and (price aside) they looked sort of like a shrunken 1911A1. I did a complete reverse, and went with a full-size, aluminum-framed .45 for carry instead.

I also read that they can share a magazine with the Colt Mustang .380, but I haven't actually talked to anyone who's done that.

I see from Sig's website that they're now having a recall on the safety, which would make me a little uneasy about buying one.

I shot the crap out of a P238 the same day I ran the Diamondback into the ground. By the end of the day, the P238 had no lubrication left on it and was running sluggishly but still stubbornly kept feeding everything I threw in there, and was easy to shoot to boot.

When I was shopping for a pocket gun, someone was picking up a couple of these Diamondbacks. He made some comment to the effect that his guns were teh awesome and I should shoot his right then (we were at a range) so I would be convinced. We did. It fed correctly maybe 5 times out of the 20 rounds I shot. To be fair, this was straight out of the box, no cleaning whatever grease or whatever it came with. I passed.

As a former engineer there, I can only concur. Sadly, it was the best engineering department I ever worked in. So many brilliant people. I did much of the best work I ever achieved, but always with one eye on management and one on the union.

If I'd had a third eye, I would have kept it on the union also. The UAW fits with firearms manufacturing the way kangaroos fit with Ferraris.

A great shop screwed into a cluster by fools on both ends of the spectum.